by Brooke Lorren

Created on: November 19, 2009

One of the most popular sports in the Summer Olympics is gymnastics. During the 2008 Beijing games, one of the biggest controversies involved the ages of the Chinese gymnasts. In order to compete in Olympic gymnastics, athletes must be at least 16 years old. Several of the Chinese female gymnasts looked much younger than that, and some believe that they may have been ineligible to compete. If the Chinese gymnasts were underage, then the team all-around gold medal would have gone to the United States team. He Kexin's gold medal on the uneven bars would have gone to Nastia Liukin. The rules that the International Olympic Committee puts into place needs to be followed; whether they involve the athlete's age or drug use, not following them is equivalent to cheating. There is evidence to suggest that not all of the Chinese gymnasts were 16 years old when they competed in the 2008 games. Another Chinese gymnast is currently under investigation for competing underage in 2000. If it is discovered that these athletes did compete while underage, they should lose their medals, just as they would if they had been caught using performance-enhancing drugs.

In 2008, there was doubt over the ages of several Chinese gymnasts. The International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) accepted the gymnasts' passports as proof that they were old enough to compete in the Olympics. They did not do much searching to prove otherwise, although there is some evidence that shows that several of them were underage. The Chinese government claims that their athletes are just smaller than the Americans and Europeans, but documents unearthed by computer security expert Mike Walker suggest that He Kexin was born on January 1st, 1994, instead of January 1st 1992, which is what her passport says. A 2004 birth date would have made He 14, not 16, when she competed in the Olympics.

2008 was not the first Olympics where the Chinese gymnasts were suspected of sending underage competitors. Two Chinese gymnasts that competed in Sydney, Dong Fangxiao and Yang Yun, are under investigation for competing underage. Yang told an interviewer in 2007 that she had been 14 during the 2000 Olympics (although she later claimed that she had misspoken). Dong worked as a technical official in the Beijing Olympics; the documents that she submitted to work during Beijing listed her birthdate as January 23, 1986, which would have made her 14 when she competed. Dong's blog said that she was born in the year of the Ox, which lasted

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